Trunk Road closures set throughout May

PALMER — Work continues on the new, expanded Trunk Road with road closures north of Bogard Road through the end of the month.

“We put out maps to people and fliers to let people know what the closures are all about, but yeah, it impacts a lot fewer people working at night than it does during the day,” said assistant project engineer Joe Homme.

He said motorists worried about potential closures can visit alaskanavigator.org to see which roads are impacted when. The Trunk Road entry on that site notes that it will be closed from 7 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday through the end of May from Bogard Road to North Birch Forest Drive.

Homme said crews are now there doing “cut and fill” operations with plans to continue on all the way to Palmer-Fishhook Road.

There are ways around the closure, using subdivision roads.

“Eventually, we’ll get done with that and we’ll have pavement on that portion and then we’re going to come down and install the roundabout at Colony Schools Road,” Homme said.

He said that when the snow flies, the roundabout will be open to east and west traffic, but Old Trunk will still service north and south traffic.

“Everything will be constructed this year as far as the new alignment goes, but we wait and let all embankments settle for a year before we put pavement on it,” Homme said.

The whole project is set to wrap up in August 2014. It will be four lanes from the Parks Highway to Bogard Road with a bike path running alongside.

“I think people will really enjoy that,” Homme said.

It will also be a much straighter route. Work completed already has eliminated numerous dangerous curves and hills, he said.

Parts of the old road will be left in place as a road servicing local subdivisions. Other parts, according to the project website trunkroad.com, will be eliminated altogether, including the segment near Board Road that runs alongside Wasilla Creek.

It’s a $21 million project paid for with federal funds and completed in multiple phases by contractor Scarsella Brothers.

The contractor, on its webpage, describes the project as consisting of “excavation of nearly 1.8 million cubic yards of soil, 1.2 million tons of borrow, 250 acres of clearing, over 8,000 feet of pipe, paving, signalization, lighting, seeding, landscaping, erosion control, signing and striping.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.